The present invention relates to a method of producing a dry earthworm powder, in particular to a method of producing an innoxious dry earthworm powder while suppressing inactivation of the enzymes contained in an earthworm.
Earthworms have been used from ancient times in oriental countries as drugs for prevention and treatment of various diseases, and have found applications such as intracystic calculus-contraction and releasing-stimulating agent, anti-choloplania agent, parturifacient, tonic, hair growth tonic, pickup, antifebrile, spasm-treating agent, blood flow accelerator, hemiplegia-treating agent, indirect analgesic, urination improving agent, anti-bronchial asthma agent, anti-hypertension agent and others.
It is necessary to remove the dirt of earthworm remaining in the digestive tracts, the deposit on the skin, and others for production of a medicine for oral administration by using the earthworm as the raw material, and various methods for that purpose have been proposed.
Examples thereof so far proposed include methods of producing a dry earthworm powder useful as an anti-diabetes agent, anti-hyperlipidemia agent, or blood pressure-adjusting agent, by immersing living bodies of earthworms in an aqueous solution of an alkali salt such as sodium salt or potassium salt, allowing them to excrete the cast in the digestive tracts, wet-grinding the earthworms, and freeze-drying the suspension thus obtained under vacuum (JP64-47718A, JP64-47719A, JP64-47720A and JP01-268639A), and a method of producing a medicine for patients with thrombosis, by immersing living bodies of earthworms in an aqueous acid solution kept at 6 to 26° C. for 0.1 to 5 hours, allowing them to excrete the cast in the digestive tracts, grinding the earthworms, degassing the homogenate, and vacuum-drying the homogenate, while the temperature is raised stepwise (JP03-72427A).
The inventors have also proposed a method of making earthworm excrete its content in the digestive tract by placing the earthworm under an environment in unpleasant habitat condition generated with organic acid (JP2008-081476A).
However, earthworm powders produced by conventional production methods had a problem that microbes contained in the earthworm are not sufficiently sterilized, depending on the drying step by vacuum freeze-drying and the like. Although measures such as alcohol sterilization were taken, these measures also had problems of increased labor and elongated period and thus of increased cost, and thus, there existed a demand for measures to solve the problems.